After Effects
by animaniacj
Summary: In the moments before the Crucible fires, Shepard has to make a split second decision. These are his thoughts and outcome.


**_"You're time is at an end, you must decide."_**

I glowered at the AI, this… projection of a child. After all it had said, after everything it told me, I had to decide.

Destruction.

Control.

Or Synthesize.

These were the last options before me. The last step to stop the Reapers from ending this cycle of the galaxy. To stop the cycle entirely.

Or not. The AI was sure the only option was forward. But I could decline. Let the choice be left to someone who wasn't on the verge of death to make a split decision.

I could.

But I wouldn't. I can stop this here and now. Just a few hobbled steps forward and this was all done.

So I began to walk, not quite sure yet. Glancing from side to side, thinking fast. Three options left, three bright, colorful streams of energy. Red from the energy storing capacitor, blue from the control couplings, and green from the unfiltered stream.

Destruction.

Control.

Or Synthesize.

Synthesis was the best. Stop the organic/synthetic schism. Heighten organic minds to synthetic levels, share the organic view with synthetics. Perhaps… even slightly undo what the reapers had done. Husks, Marauders, Banshees… just a different form of humans, turians, and asari. Let them all _empathize _with one another. Make them all finally _see_. I stepped toward the green pillar.

But then… Who was I to force my ideals onto the galaxy? What gave me the right to such an… invasion of privacy? Invasion of self? I could justify it to no end… but in the end, it wasn't right.

But then again… the Reapers. _They_ thought they had the right to galactic extermination. Again, and again, and _again_! My eyes glanced over to the power conduits, my left foot glided toward it.

They didn't get to have _my_ mercy, _my_ consideration. They were my enemy, the galaxy's enemy! If they weren't stopped here and now, they would continue on as they had, but not with me at the helm. I could assume control, make them work _for_ humanity, _fo_r the Galactic Council, _for _the uncountable souls they had trapped inside every vessel. And finally put these mistakes of machines on the track the Leviathans made them for!

I paused.

And that's what they were. Machines. Mistakes. The Leviathans were just the wrong people to make the decision. They had already been enslavers before the Reapers. The Reapers were simply proceeding with the flawed views of their makers. They deemed organics inferior probably not because they were purely machines, but that the Leviathan's had also seen us as lesser beings to begin with.

The Reapers were a mistake. And they needed to be put down.

I shifted my weight, swung my left foot towards my right and raised my gun to the enclosed capacitor.

This needed to stop. This… false order. The AI said it was the solution to chaos. But like it had compared itself to fire, fire doesn't burn for all eternity. This AI was a creation, and something AI are bad at is comprehending. They could learn, they could understand, but comprehension was just too hard to grasp.

This AI, like most horror stories, was too big, too fast. A small smile graced my lips as a funny thought occurred. The child projection was apt. It was just a child with the power to play God. It never had to learn, because it always thought it was right, and it could make its views reality.

I took another step, I took my first shot.

But we were different. We weren't the condescending Leviathan, we weren't the impassive Reapers, we were just people. And if there ever had been a synthetic person, Legion and EDI were it. EDI, from a singular battle simulation VI, to confused awakening, to functional AI, had grown with her own understanding, her own comprehension. She had an understanding of life, and when she didn't understand, she asked other people questions, not just run simulations until she came to a sterile answer.

Another shot.

Legion on the other hand seemingly came from the very disaster this AI warned about. The Morning War could have been so much worse, the quarrian people could have been utterly annihilated. They turned inward and thought, running simulations, but with a hive mind consensus. They were a race of AI, not a sequential copying of the same AI. They were a people, and it wasn't until that was understood that the quarrian people saw their home world again.

A third shot rang out, the glass began to crack, my pace quickened.

We could do this, we knew what to do. We knew what not to do. We needed to crawl, not run. Synthesis was the right way, but this was not the right time. That was another thing the AI didn't fully grasp. Synthesis couldn't be forced, the organic weren't ready, but I feel it never understood _why_ they weren't ready, simply writing it off as a failure, the Reapers being its best route of 'synthesis'.

A fourth and fifth shot fired, the glass was fractured, slivers were falling out.

Anderson would not die this day in vain. Mordin would not have cured the genophage for nothing. Thane's sacrifice would go down in glactic history. Legion would be the uplifter of the geth… doubt took my heart. I spared a glance behind me for a moment, the AI was flickering away, a frown barely on its 'lips'. With it gone, with nowhere to anchor my doubt to, my eyes went back to the capacitor, but not without noting one thing.

There was no color to the lights. It was all white. The control couplings, the center beam, the capacitor. It was all white. A memory came to mind.

The citadel was Reaper tech, the AI was Reaper tech, they all caused indoctrination. They all were meant to control organic life. It had all been a ruse. It couldn't physically stop me anymore, so it tried to make me stop, _to kill myself_. A flare burst in my heart, hatred and hope took my mind.

Perhaps… Perhaps the people before knew. Knew that this… EMP was to go through the galaxy, then why cripple themselves? Why reset themselves to a proverbial stone age? This was a Reaper killer, not a civilization ender.

Blind hope. That's what I had. Blind hope for EDI and the geth people. We would all make it out of this.

The glass broke, an explosion accompanying it. I kept approaching, kept firing.

This was going to end. This crucible was going to fire pure and simple. No changes to it whatsoever. This galactic stagnation was going to end. This chaos… was going to resolve.

Three more explosions. Heat rushed toward me. My gun left my hand. My feet left the ground.

My head was the first to meet it again.

The fist thing I head was a respirator. Shortly thereafter, a heart monitor. A hospital, no doubt. I couldn't feel much of anything, and I wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing, but from what I could tell was that both arms and legs were sending some signals that they were still there.

"Oh my god." A familiar and wholly unexpected voice whispered. "How in Sam Hell…"

My right eye cracked open, rolling further right. I was in Huerta Memorial Hospital. I had visited Thane and Ash enough to recognize it. And what I recognized even better was one Captain David Edward Anderson. I took a hard breath in in shock, and that got the man right to his feet.

"Don't even try John." Anderson said as he placed his hand on my chest. "You were damn well unrecognizable in the state we found you. It's not even been a week since the Crucible fired. You're lucky we could even find you," Anderson gravely chuckled "There's so much of the Citadel that hadn't been properly mapped, that if it weren't for the geth, you'd still be in that firing chamber."

My eyes widened, I took a deep breath, I could even feel a tear in my eye. I had been right. The geth were fine, EDI would be fine. Well, if…

"We don't know the state of the _Normandy_ yet." Anderson answered, my eyes snapping back to him, like he could read my mind. "Admiral Hackett called all fleets to disengage from the Reapers and leave Sol space to meet at their rendezvous point. A lot of ships weren't out of FTL before the blast hit them, scattering them about. A few have already been found, and their damages seemed practically superficial. The worst has come from those that crashed due to the pulse, but even in that circumstance, I'm sure Joker and EDI can make the best of it."

It wasn't the best news, but Anderson was right. It was for the best to hope for the Normandy's safe return. But that still left one gnawing question in my throat.

"_How are you alive?"_

My eyes went wide in shock at the voicing of my question, Anderson chuckled, if a little unnerved.

"The geth have been more than helpful in reconstructing the battle damage and disseminating what happened when the Crucible went off. Now that I think about it, the geth being able to be your doctors might explain why you're awake so early. They're in your cybernetics right now… but they'll leave as soon as you tell them to. We just needed all the help we could get to save as many lives as we could."

So that's it. A geth, or a quite a few of them probably, were tending to my cybernetic implants, allowing access to my brain essentially. I shuddered a little at the thought, causing Anderson to frown.

"_They're fine, Anderson. Just…adjusting to the idea."_ A geth like voice chimed from above my head, making Anderson genuinely smile.

"No way a geth sounds like that." He shook his head before looking pensive. "But why would you think I was dead? I mean, understandable from the situation we were in, but you sound like you watched me…die."

I was silent a moment before responding.

"_After I got to the beam, I was somewhere I'd never seen before, piles of corpses around me. You contacted me on the comms. We met the Illusive Man, he… shot you, before realizing he was to far gone and shot himself. You died next to me right as we opened the Citadel's arms."_

Anderson was stone-faced through my explanation before looking away in contemplation. He walked around my be to look out the window, his hands behind his back.

"What you say makes sense. The geth were able to track the beam's transit to the backup access system area. The bodies were being collected to form more husks to be deployed quickly, out of sight of anybody who would be on the Citadel due to it being deep in 'Keeper Only' territory. We found the Illusive Man's body, and finally got a name to the bastard, Marcus Quinn. Was able to scrub himself out of the extranet if you can believe it. Again, wouldn't know a damn thing without the geth able to put the extranet back together. And we found the body, one shot to the side of the head, point blank.

"But I was never there Shepard." Anderson turned fully to me. "I was out of commission in that last blast you took. You were the only one to get back up by yourself and hobble your way in. Taking a marauder and three husks out on your way up with only a pistol." He chuckled. "Only you."

"_You were with me in spirit then."_ I smiled. _"And I almost lost you. Almost lost myself."_

"Really?" Anderson walked back to his original chair. "How's that?"

_"The Reapers tried indoctrinating me to the last second. I think the Illusive Man was their last line of physical defense, even in his deluded state. It didn't physically work, but it killed *you* off. My mental fortitude. When I met it, I was beginning to waiver."_

"Met it?"

_"The first AI, the AI of the Citadel. The one that came up with the 'solution' of the damn Reapers. It 'gave' me three options, an illusion of choice. Throw myself into the Crucible's energy and merge all synthetic and organic life together, take control of the control couplings and dominate the Reapers' will, or blow a capacitor to trigger the destruction of all synthetic life."_

"That sounds like a difficult choice." Anderson commented.

**"You could have… wiped us out."** A similar voice to mine chimed in. The geth were making their own voice heard.

_"I could have, I almost chose one of the other two, but in the end, I hoped for the best."_

**"Hope."** The geth mused. **"Yet… with logic. From logs gathered from the firing chamber, there's no guarantee that either of the other two options provided would have ended as the Reaper AI had said. The only outcome of 100% certainty would be your death, Commander."**

_"And thanks to you, I'm not."_ I acknowledged and thanked my current geth residents.

"Well, rest well Shepard. We'll see about when we can get you on your-"

"Anderson?" A voice came from Anderson's Omnitool, yet another familiar one.

"Yes Admiral?" Anderson answered as he brought his arm up.

"The _Normandy_ has made contact. She's banged up from landing on Eden Prime, but Joker seems to have kept it to a minimum. It's a miracle its flight ready in a week, but I suppose that's-"

"-Just her crew." Three voices chimed, making Anderson laugh, as I would have if I could. But Admiral Hackett had gone silent.

"Was that…?"

"It is. He's conscious." Anderson answered.

"I'll be damned." Hackett muttered. "We'll meet them halfway then. I'm sure your crew will be overjoyed to know your conscious as well as alive then, and want to be back even sooner. Especially that girl of yours."

"Agreed." I smiled, content with this new beginning. As I drifted off, I imagined her arms taking me in, clearing my head, letting me sleep peacefully tonight.


End file.
